Greece’s Dragnis family has moved across different shipping sectors in recent days to offload some of its oldest units.
John Dragnis, co-founder of Oceangold Tankers and chief executive of Goldenport Shipmanagement, confirmed disposing of the 73,100-dwt crude carrier Ocean Schooner (built 2000) and the 2,500-teu TG Aphrodite (built 1999), a sub-panamax containership.
The Ocean Schooner was sold for further trading to European buyers at $7.1m, Greek brokers reported. That is significantly above the $6.5m that VesselsValue estimates the ship is worth. The TG Aphrodite is believed to have been sold for scrap at $420 per ldt, or about $4.5m.
Dragnis declined to comment on the commercial details of the two deals.
The Ocean Schooner, built at Samsung Heavy Industries, is just the latest in a string of older tankers the Dragnis family has sold in recent months.
Marvel Maritime, a company affiliated with Oceangold, divested two last year. The sales of the 47,200-dwt medium-range-two tanker Ocean Quest (built 1999) and the older sistership Theoni (built 1997) raised an estimated $12m in total.
The family appears to be putting emphasis on younger, clean product side of the business. Oceangold took delivery of four MR tanker newbuildings last year as part of its ClearOcean joint venture, bringing its managed fleet of chemical and product tankers to 14 ships.
The Ocean Schooner, by contrast, was the last crude carrier in Oceangold’s fleet.
Its sale, however, does not imply any fundamental shift in strategy, Dragnis told TradeWinds, adding that the ship will be replaced by “younger and more efficient” tonnage.
The same principle also applies to the sale of containership TG Aphrodite, the second-oldest unit in Goldenport’s fleet of five such vessels.
Athens-based brokers say that the ship was sold for demolition to an Indian yard that complies with the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships. Given their higher operating costs, such facilities were expected to be buying ships only at a discount to non-compliant yards.
Sharp competition among a growing number of compliant yards in India, however, is part of the reason why that discount is at the moment much smaller than initially anticipated, said Yiannis Kourkoulis, vice president at the purchase department of cash buyer Best Oasis.
The discount is particularly narrow, or even non-existent, for vessels like containerships, which fetch higher prices because they have a high-metal content and they are believed to be suffering less wear and tear than other types of vessels.
“Dragnis ships are believed to be particularly well-maintained and that probably boosted the price a little further,” Kourkoulis said.
